“I hear Ford smoothed out the suspension on this year’s models.”
“And increased the horsepower,” he said.
Grace let out a wistful sigh. “I won’t ask if I can drive. I wouldn’t let me if this were mine.”
Rather than contradict her assumption, Christian opened the passenger door. “Milady.”
She smiled at his courtliness. “Those girls are right,” she said as she scooted in. “You’re dreamy when you want to be.”
Christian didn’t mind the compliment from her. He slid behind the wheel, feeling a decidedly primitive satisfaction at having her in his vehicle. There wasn’t much point in trying to fight the reaction. She’d proved she could override a considerable amount of civilization and self-control.
“You might want to hold on to your hair,” he said. “This baby gets breezy with the top down.”
She laughed and reached over to tug his forelock. “Hold on to your own,” she teased.
The look on her face was joyous, her guards forgotten in her enjoyment of his fast car. If he hadn’t been in love with her already, he was convinced he’d have fallen then.
Crap,
he thought, borrowing Viv’s curse. How many times could one man fall for a woman he shouldn’t trust?
Unable to answer and unwilling to abandon the pleasure of the moment, Christian started up the car and pulled out of the grassy lot. When Christian drove was when he most felt a part of the modern world.
He didn’t get a chance to open up the engine until they were on Mulholland Drive, winding along the ridge of the Santa Monica Mountains. He wished he could have loaned Grace his night vision. Seen in their full range of colors, the twinkling views across the valley were breathtaking.
She made a little sound above the rushing of the wind, one hand holding her wildly flipping dark red hair away from her eyes.
“Too fast?” he shouted, though he knew his lightning-quick reflexes were up to even these sharp turns.
Grace grinned and shook her head.
He slowed a little, helpless to keep from being just a bit protective of her white knuckles. The thought ran through his mind that keeping her safe wouldn’t be the worst way to spend his life.
You’re an idiot,
he told himself.
An absolute, love-struck fool.
The land dropped away behind the next guardrail, forcing him to slow more. When Grace shot out her arm and clutched his knee, he thought every sexual nerve he had would explode. Neither of them could resist each other. Their private fears and personal agendas had no power against their attraction. As surely as the sun would rise, Christian knew they’d end up in bed again.
He looked at her, smiled at her, not even trying to rein in his emotions. He’d take his victories where he could.
“Christian,” said her lips, and then he heard it: a sound a hundred battle missions had seared into his memory banks.
On the slope above them, hidden among the trees, someone was working a rifle bolt.
The vampire version of adrenaline surged in him, narrowing his extra senses down to pinpoints. He probed the mind behind the weapon. As the shooter’s finger tightened on the trigger, Grace was in the telescopic sight. Clear as this was, it didn’t tell him how to avert disaster. His attention was split between the road and the sniper. Triumph swelled, and it wasn’t his.
Left,
said a voice that wasn’t his, either.
A force seemed to grip his hands, turning the wheel so sharply the car spun in a donut. The closest he’d felt to this was when a more powerful vampire had seized control of his energy. Despite his best efforts, he hadn’t been able to regain his volition then. On this night, he barely had time to try. The windshield burst halfway through the dizzying rotation. Christian slammed back into the seat as if a shovel had struck his chest.
The car slewed to a stop a heartbeat later, the sound of the squealing tires echoing in his ears. They were lucky they had this stretch of road to themselves. Christian couldn’t have prevented a collision with another car.
“Christian,” Grace gasped. “Oh, my God, you’re bleeding!”
He shook the shock from his body, grateful to discover his limbs were his to control again. A bullet had penetrated his chest wall, but the slug wasn’t iron, and it hadn’t gone very deep. Though it hurt like hell, it wasn’t going to kill him. Whoever had positioned Grace in his crosshairs wasn’t aware of the nature of her companion.
This, of course, didn’t mean they could stay where they were. As soon as the sniper realized he’d missed his target, Grace was a sitting duck.
Almost too fast to think, Christian straightened out the idling car and jammed his foot on the gas. He grabbed Grace’s nape with the same sense of urgency.
“Down,” he ordered, shoving her head between her knees. Windshield glass glittered in her hair.
With a fervor he wouldn’t have recognized a month ago, he said a prayer of thanks for the T-Bird’s power. He ignored the way Grace was struggling against his hold.
“Christian,” she said, her voice muffled by being obliged to speak into the foot well. “Let me up. We have to get you to a hospital.”
“Stay
down
,” he growled, his hand preventing her from rising.
“But I think you were shot. You shouldn’t be driving. You could pass out and kill us both.”
He shifted in the seat and winced. He was only bleeding sluggishly but more than he should have. That had been a high-velocity rifle—eight hundred miles per second was his estimate. On top of this, his normal healing powers were hampered by his recent neglect of his nutrition.
Knowing they’d driven far enough that it was no risk, he reluctantly let Grace up.
“Holy smokes,” she breathed on seeing the wreckage of the windshield. The laminated glass had mostly held together, its surface crazed like a spiderweb but not shattered. The jagged hole at the point of impact was the exception. He noticed some of his blood had blown back to it. The tiny clinging drops looked like red candy.
“I’m all right,” he said gruffly. “You could put pressure on the wound. And shake those splinters out of your hair.”
Grace shook, then dug two folded white handkerchiefs out of her little patent-leather purse. He didn’t let his pain show as she pressed them to his left pectoral. She was experiencing enough anxiety as it was.
“This is bad,” she said.
Christian almost laughed. It wasn’t so bad that the beast in him didn’t enjoy the way her white teeth worried her lower lip. His fangs were trying to lengthen, his instincts intent on replenishing the blood he’d lost.
“
Teen-Age Vampire
doesn’t need this sort of media attention,” he said with an inspired flash. “I’ll take you home, and you can patch me up.”
“I’m not a medic. I can’t remove a bullet.”
She wasn’t going to need to, but he didn’t say that.
“I’m taking you home,” he insisted.
The pressure of Grace’s hand on his chest got harder. “Who would shoot at us? Do you think it was a hunter? Do people hunt deer in the middle of the night?”
He knew her shock was fading, and consequently she was trying to make sense of seemingly nonsensical events.
“I don’t think
us
is who they were shooting at,” he said.
She fell silent at his emphasis. Maybe she knew she didn’t want him to be clearer. He appreciated the quiet, because he might have been a little light-headed after all. She had to remind him which exit to take to Nim Wei’s Pacific Palisades estate. Whoever had shot at Grace likely knew she lived there, but now that Christian was forewarned, they wouldn’t take him by surprise again. There was also the added—if dubious—advantage that Nim Wei would be close by. If he had to call on the queen for help, he would. She might be playing games with him, but he couldn’t doubt she valued her assistant.
He stopped the Thunderbird in front of Grace’s cottage without quite recalling how he’d got there. Grace removed the key from the ignition. The lower half of his once-white T-shirt was soaked with blood. He stared at it dazedly. He couldn’t remember when he’d last bled this much.
“Stay,” she said firmly. “I’ll come around and help you get out.”
“Don’t call an ambulance,” he cautioned as he leaned a portion of his weight on her. She smelled better to him than he thought was safe. “This isn’t as bad as it looks.”
“You know you’re an idiot, right?”
It wasn’t funny, but he laughed. The sound cut off when she lowered him to her flowered couch. He swallowed a groan as she swung his legs up onto the cushions. The bullet was starting to wiggle, his vampire immune system thrusting it out of him. Though it was necessary, the sensation was hideous.
Slamming into his super-hard immortal muscles had flattened the projectile considerably. He didn’t want to, but he sat up far enough to shrug off his leather jacket.
“Let’s get this off you, too.” Grace sat next to him at hip level. She cut the hem of his bloody T-shirt with a pair of nail scissors, then ripped it the rest of the way upward.
Christian couldn’t stop her. He was too busy holding his breath with pain. A fresh spurt of wetness ran down his chest, indicating that the misshapen bullet had reached his skin layer.
“
Oh
.” Grace’s hands fluttered above his ribs. “It looks like . . . like the bullet is being pushed out of you.”
He gasped as it tumbled out, his lungs agreeing to work again. The air in them felt hot and cindery.
“Christian, how did that happen?”
“You know how,” he said wearily.
“I swear I don’t. Unless the bullet was going slowly and didn’t penetrate as far as I thought.”
He opened his eyes and looked into her pleading expression. Somewhere inside, buried under that mountain of denial, she remembered exactly who and what he was. “You know what the wound looked like when we were in the car. Wipe away the blood and see what it looks like now.”
“I don’t think I should touch it,” she refused nervously.
He pulled the ripped shirt out from under him and wiped the wound clean himself. More white showed around Grace’s eyes. Even as she watched, the edges of his injury sealed closed.
“That’s not—Christian, you shouldn’t play tricks on me.”
“I don’t even need to thrall you, do I? No matter what oddities I show you, you’ll explain them away.”
She didn’t seem to appreciate his dark humor. “Maybe you’re delirious. Let me get you some orange juice.”
He caught her wrist before she could rise. Both their fingers were bloody. “Orange juice isn’t what I need.”
“But you’ve gone pale. I’m sure your blood sugar’s dropped.”
He wasn’t pale; he’d simply lost his hold on his glamour—along with shedding the remnants of his film makeup. Grace was seeing his true face, in all its shining white glory. His fangs were stretching behind his lips, his hunger rising intolerably. Her blood would finish healing him, would make him strong enough to protect her from any threat. The reasoning was seductive. His gaze fell to the pulse that throbbed between her clavicles. She touched the hollow uneasily.
“Christian,” she said, but he was unable to lift his eyes from that ever-faster beating temptation. “Tell me what you need. If it’s mine to give, I will.”
This was more permission than most
upyr
waited for. She stroked his hair from his forehead, and he realized he was panting, because the sound hastened at her touch. His right hand seemed to rise by itself. It cupped the back of her neck, his bloodstained thumb stretching forward to stroke the silken warmth of her skin. He swallowed hard with longing.
“Grace,” he said huskily, his palm beginning to exert pressure. “If you’re going to pull away from me, do it now . . . ”
G
race didn’t want to pull away. She wanted to go soft and pliant, to let him do whatever awful act he seemed to have in mind. Her body felt fevered as her elbows braced on the cushions beside his ribs. His head was propped on the couch’s upholstered arm. His eyes were glowing, his palm a curve of steel underneath her hair. When he wet his lips, something white and pointy glistened between them.
He wasn’t too weak to lift up his head to her. His lips whispered hot and satiny on her neck, and his breath came harder. His tongue curled out, stirring a shiver. As he tasted her, he let out a moan of longing that clenched her sex and filled it with liquid. There was a second when she could have pushed him away. Then he widened his jaw and bit down.
The pain brought tears to her eyes, two sharp spears of it piercing her. She struggled, but his hands were tight on her arms. His lips had formed a seal on her skin. She felt his tongue move between them a moment before his cheeks hollowed.
They both cried out: he against her vein, she with her spine arched so strongly she could have been a contortionist. He was feeding from her, swallowing her blood, and the pleasure was incredible—wave rolling over wave as every cell in her body tried to contract in orgasm. With another cry, he jackknifed up, his arms hugging her closer. Wanting that as much as he did, she clutched him back. The noises he made as he sucked on her were so sexual, so hungry, so unbelievably arousing that she wished she could record them.